


the coldest winter, the brightest spring

by masulevin



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, POV Multiple, Post-Apocalypse, References to Depression, Scars, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:00:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masulevin/pseuds/masulevin
Summary: Soulmates are supposed to share scars, but no one is supposed to have this many.Joel and Emma through the years as they struggle to find hope and stay alive after everything breaks down.
Relationships: Joel (The Last of Us)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57





	the coldest winter, the brightest spring

Emma’s first memory is of her mama explaining why a new scar had shown up on her knee overnight, how it meant her soulmate had gotten hurt but was okay, that it’s a sign from God that they’re going to find each other one day.

“You’ll know it’s him because he’ll have the same mark on his knee,” she said, and Emma traced the little semi-circle in wonder.

She has a soulmate? Where are they?

“I hope God sends him to me soon,” she said, and her mother laughed.

It hadn’t felt cruel then, but maybe it was.

\---

Joel’s never been totally certain about some of his smaller scars. Some of them he remembers getting but some of them he doesn’t, but that doesn’t help him figure out which ones come from his soulmate and which ones are his. He’s pretty sure he has one, but he doesn’t know for sure. She’s just more careful than he is, probably, less likely to get into an accident or a fight or whatever.

He doesn’t know who his soulmate is, but he knows who it _isn’t,_ but that doesn’t matter, not with a baby on the way. They’re too young, but he’s gotta be a man. He has to take responsibility, and it doesn’t matter that he gets a brand new jagged scar over his collarbone a few weeks after the shotgun wedding.

It doesn’t matter because he’s doing the right thing, getting married. He wants to be there to see his daughter grow up, to give her the life he didn’t get to have. He wants Jess to stop screaming about the scar because it _doesn’t matter._

It doesn’t.

Not anymore.

\---

He spends a long day at a job site with an aching knee before he realizes he’s gotten a new soulmate scar, one straight line down the middle of his right kneecap. She probably had some sort of surgery, and he stares at the pink line instead of watching the Disney movie Sarah picked out.

One of the good things about Jess being gone is that there’s no one to yell at him about it, like he has any control over who his soulmate is or what she’s doing to her body to mark his in turn. 

Sarah’s the only one there, and she’s the only one who matters now, and she asks him about a thousand questions about soulmates before she starts on an inventory of her own little scars. She wants to know how she got each and every one in case one belongs to her soulmate instead of to her.

She’s so excited about the idea, but he just feels a sense of dread over it. What if her soulmate is an asshole? What if he hurts her? What if they meet when they’re sixteen and he’s a grandfather at thirty-two?

She’s a little too old to sit in his lap, but she lets him pull her in anyway so he can hold her while she stares at the scar by her thumb he doesn’t have an explanation for, hoping he can keep her safe for just a little while longer.

\---

Emma hasn’t gotten any new scars since the world went to shit and she got crowded into an apartment with three other women. She can’t stop touching the scar she got from her soulmate on her temple, because it’s the only tangible thing she has to remind herself of them.

She’s never going to find them now, not with the way everything’s going. So much of the world is already dead and modern life is falling apart. The cell towers and the Internet are already nearly a thing of the past, and FEDRA keeps talking about how it’s going to come back, but… she doesn’t believe them.

All she can do is hold on and hope she’s wrong, hope _FEDRA_ is wrong, hope that this is something the CDC is able to get a handle on before all hope is lost.

She hasn’t even heard from her family since the outbreak happened, and she can’t get out of the Quarantine Zone, and…

Something sharp breaks across her nose, and she drops the pen she’s holding to slap her hand to her face. Nothing’s wrong, but there’s an indent on the bridge now, a little scar she didn’t get from journaling.

Her soulmate _is_ alive. They’re out there, somewhere, getting hurt.

It makes her feel sick, the combination of surging hope and crashing worry. Hope that she’ll get to meet them combining with worry they’re out there still getting hurt. Hope that they’re going to be okay with worry that they _won’t._

It’s too much to handle.

It’s too much.

Everything is… too much.

\---

Life in the QZ is everything she never wanted for herself. She moved here so she wouldn’t have to go to bible college like her sisters -- she never wanted someone telling her where to go and what time to go to sleep and what to do for every waking hour. She wanted to make her own life, pursue her own dreams, not… not sit around, doing paperwork for the FEDRA outpost, watching the scars on her knuckles slowly growing thicker even though she’s not fighting anyone.

Her soulmate is.

She’s sitting on her ass all the time trying to remember why it’s worth it to wake up in the morning, to eat dinner, to brush her teeth and go back to bed, and her soulmate is out there somewhere, still fighting, still working toward something.

She’s letting them down.

They won’t want her like this.

\---

What is her soulmate doing that she’s getting all these cuts on her upper arm?

Is someone doing it to them?

Are they doing it to themselves?

Where the fuck are they. She just wants to help.

\---

Joel’s soulmate hasn’t gotten a new scar since before the outbreak. 

Maybe she’s in one of the QZs, safe as FEDRA can keep her.

Maybe she died in the first few days and he’ll never know.

Maybe he lost her like he’s lost everyone but Tommy.

At least he can keep Tommy safe, even if he can see the way Tommy looks at him when he kills an uninfected man to take his food, even if he can see the way Tommy flinches away from the things he has to do to keep them safe and fed and outside of FEDRA’s control.

He thought about giving up right after the outbreak. He sat in that triage tent and thought about taking a gun from one of the agents and just… just ending it. He’d be with Sarah again. He wouldn’t be living like this.

He doesn’t deserve to live like this.

But Tommy doesn’t need to be alone.

He’ll stay for Tommy.

Tommy needs him.

He can stay alive for that.

\---

Emma’s long sleeves cover a round scar on her forearm, even in the heat of the southern summer. She’s sweating but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t know if the bullet hole is from fighting insurgents in a QZ or from fighting FEDRA agents, and at this point she’s not totally sure which one is worse.

She’s been working alongside FEDRA for so long, but they’re not taking care of Nashville the way they should. Food rations are getting tighter and there’s no hope on the horizon, not that she can see.

There are whispers going around that there are people fighting back, and she doesn’t think they’re entirely in the wrong.

She wishes she knew where her soulmate falls on the political divide she never thought she’d see in real life. The government trying to keep them safe or the political insurgents trying to take care of themselves? 

The government lying to them and letting them go hungry, letting cholera break out in the summer and deadly flu during the winter… or the domestic terrorists who have killed soldiers and divvied out food stores that were supposed to last for weeks.

What is she supposed to do?

\---

Okay, maybe she wasn’t supposed to help the Fireflies. 

Maybe she shouldn’t have helped them slowly break down FEDRA control over Nashville. Maybe she should have stayed working on FEDRA’s behalf until they food ran out and they starved to death or they all got fucking cholera again.

Maybe she shouldn’t have helped the Fireflies bring down FEDRA when the Fireflies didn’t have enough infrastructure to replace them, because now the Fireflies are losing control to the people of Nashville who are good and tired of being told what to do.

Maybe she should get out.

Maybe it’s time to go home. 

\---

West Virginia isn’t what she remembers.

It’s nothing like she remembers. It’s been absolutely _ravaged_ over the last seven years, ruined so thoroughly that she can barely pick her way back to her family’s home.

She wasn’t sure what she’d find here, after all this time. It’s not like she had a way to communicate with them, to see how they were holding up after the outbreak, but she’d at least hoped…

She hoped…

It doesn’t matter now.

Nothing matters now.

At least they’re at peace, finally.

She doesn’t know how long they weren’t, but it doesn’t matter now.

She left them alone, but she took care of them in the end.

Nothing else matters now.

Nothing else.

\---

Lexington’s as much of a shithole as everything else in the world, but supplies are a little easier to come by up here, and Tommy’s quit complaining so much about everything. It’s a little nicer than anything they’ve come across in Texas or Oklahoma, and maybe… maybe they can find somewhere to stay for a while, to really rest.

Rest sounds nice.

And that’s what they’re doing, at least for the night, holed up in someone’s abandoned house, when Tommy starts to swear and yank at Joel’s watch. 

Joel pushes him away, but Tommy is insistent, and they start to scuffle until Joel finally realizes Tommy _isn’t_ trying to take away the last thing he has of Sarah -- he just wants Joel to look at his wrist.

The fight goes out of both of them so fast it makes Joel’s head spin. There’s an angry red line up the center of his wrist, starting from under the watch’s band and ending almost at the crook of his elbow.

Only one thing makes a scar that looks like that.

“Fuck.” Tommy breaks the silence first, like he always does, reaching out to grip Joel’s shoulder in a comforting squeeze, his other hand straying to his own soulmate scar on his forehead like he can’t help it. “Fuck. I’m sorry, man.”

Joel’s fingers are shaking when he traces this last, fresh new scar.

“Yeah. Me too.”

\---

Emma can barely bandage her arm with how badly her hands are shaking, but she pushes herself through the motions and crawls into the bed her parents used to share. It’s dusty and motheaten and it doesn’t smell like them, but it holds her body the way they did when she was young, and it keeps her safe until she’s strong enough to keep herself safe out in the world.

Her new scar itches, and she tries not to pick at it. She doesn’t want to make it worse.

What must her soulmate think of her now?

She’s too distracted to notice the hunters that grab her outside of Charleston, and one nearly slices her throat before she’s able to fight him off. The strength of her anger surprises her, surging through her body and giving her the strength to fight them off, to grab the knife from the one who dared put his hands on her, to end his life with it as his friends flee.

She needs to find somewhere to be happy, somewhere to live, but…

She does want to live.

She does.

\---

Joel’s sitting watch when he gets a pain under his chin, just along his jawline. He thinks it’s a bug bite at first, doesn’t think anything about it until he sees his reflection a few days later. There’s a little scar there, a short line like someone held a knife to his throat but was knocked back before they could finish the job.

He touches the scar under his jaw, then the scar on his wrist.

She survived.

She’s alive, and, selfishly, so selfishly, he hopes she can stay that way.

He tells Tommy just to see Tommy smile for the first time in days, and Tommy suggests they find somewhere to settle. Maybe having a home base will make it easier for her to find them, right? When you’re lost, you’re supposed to stay in one spot and let the other person come to you, right?

They fight again.

Joel can’t stay still, can’t stop fighting long enough to let the memories catch up to him. Not just the memories of Sarah, of Outbreak Day, but of everything that’s happened since. All the lives he’s taken, all the food he’s stolen, all the information he’s extracted.

Tommy can’t stop glaring at him.

Maybe Tommy hates him as much as Joel hates himself.

\---

So many cities have fallen apart. If the infection didn’t drag them down, then it was mismanagement by FEDRA, or it was a Firefly uprising that didn’t go according to plan, or it was Hunters that have taken over and refused to cede control.

Smaller towns, suburbs or farms or anything that wasn’t important enough to build a QZ around… they’re gone too, mostly, or they’re too small to risk bringing in an outsider.

She can’t blame them, not really.

She trades what she can and keeps going, stopping to rest where she can, pushing through until she feels like she’s about to collapse when she can’t. She makes it all the way to the coast, stares at the ocean waves hitting the shore, and wonders what it would be like to just… walk in and not come back out.

She stays put, her feet buried in the cold sand, and touches the scars on her knuckles, the scars on her arms, the little scar on her jaw beside the one the Hunter gave her, and she thinks about her soulmate, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, and just… holds on.

She holds on.

\---

Boston’s QZ is still a QZ, but it’s the best one he’s seen since Outbreak Day. They let him and Tommy inside but make them pass physical exams to prove they haven’t been infected before they’re allowed to mix in with the general population. 

They’re assigned an apartment, jobs, ration cards, told when they’re allowed outside and when they’re allowed to sleep. Joel hates it. It chafes against him, but Tommy settles like he was born to it.

Tommy’s wanted stability since they left Austin, and if this is the closest they can get?

Joel can ignore the rest.

He tries not to, but he looks to see if the women he passes have scars on their nose like his, or the matching set under their jaws. He knows Tommy does the same with the scar on his forehead, the one that showed up an hour before the world really, truly started going to shit.

He doesn’t find her.

What are the chances she’d be in Boston, anyway?

He should stop looking.

He doesn’t know how.

\---

He should’ve known Tommy was going to leave when he started making noises about the Fireflies. He should’ve known he was losing his brother the second Tommy started talking about how many new scars he’s been getting lately, how he needs to go out and find his soulmate before it’s too late.

He should’ve known Tommy was going to leave when he started talking to Marlene.

He should’ve known better than to bring Tommy here.

Now he’s all alone.

\---

She should have come to the east coast years ago. So many people left their hurricane supplies untouched, and it’s easier to find canned food here than anywhere else.

Fewer people, too, which is nice. No one’s trying to kill her as she comes down through Augusta and realizes the Atlanta QZ is still up and running. 

She heads there, next, ready to turn herself into FEDRA and find somewhere safe to stay.

She can’t wander alone anymore.

Maybe her soulmate is in the city.

Can’t hurt to try, right?

\---

The one good thing about Boston is that he never has to worry about where he’s going to sleep at night. He knows he’ll have a roof over his head and extra ration cards whenever he needs them, as long as he can finish his jobs on time. 

It’s not that bad, really.

Tommy’s gone, fucked off and followed a pipedream out to Wyoming. He couldn’t even stay with the Fireflies that long, always looking for a place to call home.

He dragged Joel to the city and them left him here when Joel wouldn’t follow his whims anymore, and fuck him anyway.

(The worst part is Joel will never know if something happened to Tommy out there, between Boston and Wyoming, because who would tell him? Who would know?)

He doesn’t know what his soulmate is doing out there, but she’s still alive at least. Little scars show up occasionally, really just scratches compared to everything else, on his arms or legs or hands, and most of them are so faint he has to really search for them.

A thick one shows up on his right thumb in the middle of the night, jerking him awake, disturbing Tess beside him, but that’s the worst one she’s had in months and months. It’s a defensive wound, the kind you get from catching a knife that gets too close.

He tries not to think about the time he’s given people the same marks before he’s taken their lives.

She’ll be okay.

She’s strong.

\---

Atlanta is somehow better and worse than Nashville was. She lives where FEDRA tells her to, works where FEDRA tells her to, and then after curfew… she leaves, she sneaks out, she goes into the suburbs and finds things that people left behind in their haste to leave, and then she smuggles them back into the city to sell.

She doesn’t mind going into the worst parts of towns, the places where the infection is the worst, the places where spores float thick as smog in front of her gas mask.

Her soulmate is still out there somewhere, getting little scars, probably wondering what happened to her hand after she let a raider get a little too close to her up in Marietta. 

Maybe one day she’ll be able to explain to them where all her scars came from. Maybe one day she’ll be able to find out what they were doing to get shot in the arm all those years ago.

A Firefly stops in Atlanta on their way to the coast, sneaking into the QZ to rest for a couple days with friends before moving on. She tells Emma about a town she heard of, out in Wyoming, where people are trying to have a real, independent civilization again.

And, well. 

Emma’s never been to Wyoming.

\---

She almost gives up a hundred times during the 1600 miles between Atlanta and Jackson. She almost turns around, goes east or south instead, almost gives up on what she’s sure must be a pipe dream about an independent settlement where there are no infected or FEDRA or fireflies or Hunters.

She almost turns around, almost gives up, but… she doesn’t.

It takes her most of the winter and then most of the spring to get there, but she keeps going, keep scavenging and hunting and surviving on her own until she sees the lights -- the electric lights! -- from a mountain rise and she realizes she _hasn’t_ made a mistake. 

She hasn’t believed a lie.

Jackson is real, and it’s here, and it’s right in front of her, just a day away probably, and she can make it.

She can be happy.

She can be home.

She’s greeted at the gates by some armed guards, and that’s not all that unusual really, not after wandering from fallen city to QZ to fallen city, so she just raises her arms and says she’s looking for a place to call her home, and instead of turning her away… They let her in.

They don’t let her wander free, but she expected that. She doesn't know how they run things here, but she’s pretty sure no settlement in the _world_ will just let a stranger inside without finding out what they want. It only makes sense.

She’s led to a room where she sits by herself, and then there’s a woman there with soft eyes and a little smile who explains she needs to check Emma for bites, just in case, just because they can’t have someone turning in the middle of town, right? And she _is_ right, so Emma follows her directions and submits to the exam.

She hasn’t been bitten. It’s nearly the only thing that _hasn’t_ happened to her since the outbreak. 

Maura doesn’t say anything about the scars that cover Emma’s body, the scars that show two lifetimes’ worth of struggle. She doesn't mention the gunshot scars from her soulmate or the line up her forearm that she gave to herself. She doesn’t mention the twin scars under her jaw that show the times she and her soulmate were in the same near-death spot.

She just looks for bites and then her soft little smile grows into something more genuine. She squeezes Emma’s arm and says, “You must be exhausted. I’ll show you where you can wash up and get some rest.”

And when Emma bursts into tears, relief so heavy she’s nearly dragged down with it, Maura just pulls her in and lets her cry.

For the first time in nearly twenty years, it feels like coming home.

\---

Joel hasn’t gotten a new scar in months.

He doesn’t know what to think about it.

He’s thought she was dead before, and she’s always popped back up alive when he thought he’d never get another scar from her again. 

He’s thought scars would be her last one, and she got more.

He doesn’t know what to expect from her anymore.

He’s still sure she isn’t in Boston.

Maybe she’s found happiness somewhere.

He hopes she has.

\---

Looking directly at Ellie reminds him too much of before, when he didn’t have to worry about CDI or infected or whether or not he had enough ration cards to last out the week. It hurts too much so he just _doesn’t,_ he just looks near her when he has to talk and tries not to look at her face because the sad eyes and silly puns are too much for him to deal with.

They’re too much.

He just needs to get her to the Fireflies, and everything will be fine.

He can go back to Boston, back to his life, the one he’s carved out with Tess, and just… keep going.

Nothing needs to change.

He’ll be fine.

\---

Tess is gone. 

He’s never going to see her again, never going to be able to talk to her or hold her or kiss her, and he just has to be okay with that. He has to keep going because what else is there for him to do?

What else has there _ever_ been for him to do?

He has to keep Ellie safe, and get her to Tommy, because Tommy knows how to get her to the Fireflies, and then he can be done.

Nothing else needs to change.

He’ll be fine.

\---

There were times he thought they wouldn’t make it, but they found their way all the way to Jackson. He thought he could hand Ellie over to Tommy and let Tommy take her all the way to the Fireflies, but… 

The panic of Ellie maybe being hurt? The panic of Ellie being gone?

Her throwing Sarah in his face doesn’t change anything, even as furious as it makes him. He would have done anything to protect Sarah; he would have carried her all the way to Dallas to get her to safety if he had to. He would have given his _life_ to let Sarah grow up and enjoy the life he fought tooth and nail to give her.

He would have walked from Massachusetts to Wyoming for Sarah just like did for Ellie.

He can get Ellie to Colorado just fine.

He can’t let her go where he can’t help her.

They ride into Jackson with Tommy, intent on eating fresh food and showering and sleeping in real beds for the first time in months. It’s a beautiful little town, and Joel can hear Ellie’s soft noises of genuine surprise and delight behind him, even above the abbreviated tour Tommy’s giving him on their way to his house.

The house was built pre-outbreak, carefully maintained with electric lights all turned on and music playing quietly from some other room. There are photos up on the walls and rugs on the floors, and it’s so, so easy to believe they’ve been transported back to 2013, or at least to a time where there aren’t infected running around outside.

“That you, honey? You got the plant working again!” A woman comes out from what looks like the kitchen, her hair tied back and her face lit up in a soft smile. There’s a scar on her forehead that matches the one on Tommy’s, and Joel forgets how to breathe.

Tommy finally found her, all the way out here.

She doesn’t take her eyes off Joel even when Tommy puts his hand on her waist and presses a kiss right against the center of her scar, and it’s only after he’s greeted her that he turns to introduce them.

Her name is Maura, and Tommy proudly says he found her outside the town six years ago and convinced her to marry him five years ago, and they haven’t even had time to take off their shoes but now Joel has their whole story. Maura’s face is dusted pink, but Tommy looks so goddamn _happy_ that Joel can’t bring himself to say he hasn’t gotten a new scar in almost four years even when Tommy asks.

Joel and Ellie accept clean clothes and showers, dinner they’re not allowed to help prepare, and then Ellie and Maura disappear to explore the town together while Joel and Tommy catch up.

There’s been a lot.

They barely have time to get through it all before the girls are back, Ellie bouncing into Joel’s space talking a mile-a-minute about all the people she’s met, including a woman they found playing guitar outside on her porch.

Joel doesn’t want to take Ellie away from here. She could be happy, find whoever it is who has the matching bite mark on her arm, go to school and have a last shot at a normal childhood. She doesn’t deserve what the universe has put on her.

But then, who does?

As soon as they’re rested and resupplied, they’ll head to Colorado.

They have to.

\---

Joel plans to leave early, but it’s mid-morning by the time they head out. Tommy and Maura give them most of the supplies they’ll need, food and ammo and about a hundred well-wishes.

A woman arrives with one of the town’s horses on a lead, and Ellie bounces a little where she’s standing next to Joel. He thinks it’s because of the horse, but it’s because it’s the same woman she met yesterday, the one who was playing guitar.

She hands him the horse’s reins, and then a small paper-wrapped bundle, and then she’s turning away from him to face Ellie before he has time to do more than just blink at her. She looks familiar in a way that’s vague enough to be unsettling, but Tommy and Maura and Ellie don’t seem to feel the same way. He steps away from her and opens the package to see a single pair of knit socks, just about his size.

He looks back in time to see Ellie opening a smaller pair of socks in the same color, but the woman is already walking back the way she came, her head down, her hands in the pocket of her jacket.

She looks back like she can feel his eyes on her, and she smiles at him. It’s bright and beautiful, and under any other circumstances…

Well. That doesn’t matter now.

Tommy says her name is Emma, and she works in the stables most of the time.

“I can introduce you properly when you come back,” Maura says, and Ellie’s face lights up in a way that means she’s going to annoy him about this the first chance she gets, so he just shakes his head and grumbles and ignores Tommy’s laughter at his expense.

It’s time for them to move on.

\---

Emma knew Tommy’s brother was in town, had met Ellie the night before when Maura was giving her the tour. They’d stopped and talked for a bit, smiling and laughing. Ellie was so bright, so curious, wanted to know about her guitar and her singing and Ellie had practically glowed when Emma promised her a pair of new socks tomorrow morning.

Ellie's never had brand new socks before.

Kids born since the outbreak didn’t know any different, but it doesn’t mean they don’t _deserve_ better. They shouldn’t be facing food shortages and FEDRA and the constant threat of infection. 

They definitely shouldn’t be dragged out of the safety of a town as good as Jackson.

She knew he was in town but was surprised at the look of him, tall and broad with silver threading through dark hair. He looked so surprised when she handed him the socks she’d found she thought would fit him that she had to turn away before she laughed.

And then when she looked back over his shoulder for another glance… he was already looking at her, and he smiled back when she did, and, well.

Maybe he’ll come back before winter really hits.

\---

She doesn’t have to run patrols as often as the others, but she’s not exempt just because she works in the stables and can make new socks faster than everyone else. She’s just good with her hands is all, and that translates to being a good shot with the infected too.

She gets paired up with different people, depending on where she’s needed, who needs to be covered for a day off, but she always enjoys her patrols with Tommy.

Well, she enjoys them as much as anyone can enjoy spending a few hours checking for signs of infected.

Tommy’s always joking, testing how far he can go before she starts to crack, and he always looks so goddamn _smug_ when she starts laughing and can’t stop that she can’t ever find it within her to be mad at him.

He’s in the middle of trying to convince her to make a sweater for him, gesturing broadly at the snowfall around them to demonstrate why he absolutely needs one right now, when pain erupts in her back, tearing through her to her stomach.

She cries out and curls around herself on the horse, holding on tight with her thighs to keep herself in the saddle. Tommy cuts himself of mid-sentence to call her name, reaching for her like he’ll be able to do anything for her now.

“It’s not me,” she says, and her voice is choked with tears. She can’t even see Tommy’s face anymore, barely registers that he’s taken her horse’s reins and is pulling it alongside his. “It’s my soulmate.”

She can’t stop shaking. She feels sick, nausea rising up behind the pain and adrenaline coursing through her. She’s no use to Tommy like this, but she can’t stop it.

She’s never been this certain before.

Her soulmate is gone.

Tommy waits until they’re inside the next checkpoint to pull her down, physically removing her from the horse when she barely cooperates. She sits where he puts her and tries not to be sick on her boots as he starts to fuss, but it’s only after he kneels at her side and tries to rub feeling back into her fingers that she realizes she’s freaking him out too.

“I’m fine,” she tries again, but he doesn’t believe her, not until she takes off her thick winter coat and he looks at the skin of her back.

Just by her spine, halfway between her shoulder blades and hips, there’s a new scar, bright in its freshness, rounded in the middle but jagged at the outer edges. It’s too big, and the matching scar on her stomach betrays how much damage must have been done, and there’s no way her soulmate survived this one.

The bullets and the knives and the outbreak itself… her soulmate all handled those things fine, came through ready for more, only to die now, so many years later, before she ever had a chance to meet them.

She’s crying again before she knows it, deep sobs that wrack her whole body and make her gasp for breath as they leave her. It’s the deepest she’s grieved since she went back to West Virginia, and she doesn’t know how to pull herself out of it.

She cries until she doesn’t have any more tears left in her, and then she keeps drawing in hiccuping breaths like the grief is wrapped around her throat.

She can’t do this.

Tommy helps her put her coat back on, wipes her face with the same tenderness he would a child, and then guides her back up onto her horse without speaking.

She doesn’t even realize they’re heading back to the town instead of to the next stop on their patrol until they’re nearly back at the gates, too late to protest, and the guilt starts to weigh her down too.

She can’t even help the town now. What good is she?

Maura’s at home making lunch, and she drops everything she’s holding to reach for Emma as soon as they walk in the front door.

They cry together, right there on the couch, and then Emma falls asleep with Maura’s fingers running through her hair.

She’s too empty for anything else.

\---

He’s gonna die.

He always knew he’d die out in the wild, fighting for his life, but he thought it would be with Tommy at his side.

He didn’t think it would be from falling on a goddamn piece of rebar. He didn’t think it would be on his way across the country with a little girl at his side. He didn’t think it would be before he met his soulmate.

He’s gonna die, and he’s gonna die in the middle of fucking Colorado, and Ellie’s gonna be all on her own out here.

He’s gonna die, and he’s gonna go to hell, and his soulmate won’t be there either.

He doesn’t wanna die yet.

He has so much left to do.

It just hurts so much.

He _hurts._

\---

Emma thinks there might be a schedule for people coming unannounced into her house. They walk in and say they’re just dropping by, just dropping something off, just wanted to see if she’s had time to fix that sweater they left, just wanted to see if she wanted to meet up for karaoke night, just wanted, just wanted, just wanted.

Emma just wants to go to sleep and not wake up again. She doesn’t want to face one more cold morning in Jackson, the scars on her stomach and back a constant reminder that she’s really, truly alone.

\---

Spring comes slow in Jackson. Winter fights hard to stay in the valley, snow comes late in the year, frosty mornings creep even closer to summer. Days she would have woken up sweating in Nashville or Atlanta see her waking up shivering.

Her guitar sits unused by her bed, a fine layer of dust coating its surface. She stares at it as the morning light comes through her window, wishing she could just reach over and touch it.

If she could just hold it, maybe she can find that peace inside herself again, the way music has always made her feel.

It’s just so far away.

\---

Driving from Salt Lake City back to Jackson makes the trip so much more bearable, even with Ellie periodically falling silent and staring at the bite mark on her arm.

He grips the steering wheel so hard it creaks under his fingers.

He did what he had to do.

She’s safe.

He protected her.

He would do it again to bring her back home.

\---

The scar on his stomach hurts more than the scar on his back, still tender and red around the edges where damaged skin meets undamaged. It’s hard not to itch at it, but he does his best, because he doesn’t want it to get worse or to draw attention to it.

People don’t need to know what happened to them when they were gone.

Tommy’s a different story, though. They’re _brothers._ They have more history together than anyone else in this town, and if he can’t tell Tommy what he’s been through, who can he tell?

They head to one of the closer towns outside Jackson where Tommy knows there’s a music store or two because Joel promised Ellie he’d teach her to play the guitar and now he has the time to follow through on that promise, and they hole up in a house to sit and actually talk.

Joel feels like the story is being dragged out of him, each word burning his throat and almost getting caught behind his teeth.

Tommy doesn’t help. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “That is a lot,” he says.

Yeah.

Yeah it fucking is.

It’s enough that Tommy doesn’t ask him more questions about it until they get back to town, and then he leaves him alone to finish fixing the guitar for Ellie. 

At least she’ll be able to have a real childhood here, mostly. She can finish school and learn how to actually survive, not just learn how to be a FEDRA soldier or whatever the hell they were teaching her in that military school.

She can be happy. She can have a real life.

She’ll be _alive._

He told Tommy he did what he had to do to protect her, and he meant it.

He’ll do anything to keep her safe.

\---

Ellie’s really taken to that woman with the socks, the one who works in the stables most of the time. Seems like every time Joel turns around, he sees Ellie trailing along behind Emma, talking her ear off about something, or they’re sitting down somewhere so Ellie can show off the chords he’s teaching her.

It’s probably good for Ellie to have a woman she can turn to, anyway, and Emma never seems upset by the attention. 

Not that he’s looking, because it’s really none of his business, but she seems a little happier when Ellie’s with her than she does when he sees her alone.

He’s heard Maura and Tommy talking about her a time or two, asking if one or the other has checked on her yet that day. He’s pretty sure she’s sick, but he hasn’t thought it polite to ask about it.

At least Ellie’s helping.

She always was somehow good at distracting him in one breath and tripping over the very thing he didn’t want to talk about in the next.

As long as Ellie’s making Emma smile the way she does, with her whole face lighting up like that, he’s not going to interfere.

Seems like it’s good for them both.

\---

Longer days and more sunshine help Emma feel better, but it’s really Ellie that moves her to finally pick her guitar back up after so many weeks untouched. The girl is excitable and eager to learn, and they sit and practice together sometimes.

It’s sweet. It’s like… well it’s almost like having a daughter might be, if Emma had met her soulmate a couple decades ago.

It’s nice.

Sometimes Emma spies Joel nearby, like he’s checking on Ellie, but he doesn’t ever come join them. She doesn’t want to step on his toes -- Ellie’s been clear that _Joel_ is the one teaching her to play the guitar -- but he doesn’t seem eager to join them anyway.

Ellie has a lot of questions about songwriting, though.

That gives them enough to talk about.

It takes her a couple weeks, but Ellie works up the courage to ask about Emma’s soulmate. She does it without quite looking at her, guitar balanced on her lap and one hand on her right forearm over her sleeve, and Emma knows it’s not really about _her_ soulmate.

It’s about Ellie’s.

The pain doesn’t care what Emma knows. It still chokes her, wrapping around her heart like it did during the coldest part of winter when she got her last scar. She pushes past it, clears her throat, and says, “They died.”

Ellie blinks up at her. “They?”

“He or she. Not really sure.” She manages a smile for Ellie, but she knows it doesn't reach her eyes. It feels fake on her face, fragile.

Ellie nods once and looks back at her guitar, fiddling with the tuning keys without really turning them. “I think mine’s probably a girl.”

Emma’s fake smile cracks into something real. “Maybe she’s in Jackson. You probably haven’t met everyone yet.”

Ellie’s cheeks turn pink and she scoffs. The pink deepens into a red when Emma starts to laugh.

She remembers being that age, being secretly hopeful and outwardly aloof to the whole concept of having a soulmate.

If there’s any good left in this world, Ellie’s soulmate will be here, and they’ll be able to find each other.

If not… maybe she’ll still be able to be happy.

Maybe.

Maybe.

\---

“Emma says her soulmate died.”

Joel’s fingers slip and the guitar lets out a discordant note of complaint. “It ain’t really polite to be asking people about their soulmates, Ellie.”

Ellie blinks up at him, suspiciously innocent. “She says mine could be in Jackson.”

He grinds his teeth together for a second before he answers. “Could be, yeah.”

“Maybe yours is here too.” She quits staring at him and focuses on her fingers, forcing them to curl into the right shape to get the right sound from her guitar, the one he fixed up for her. She lowers her voice almost to a whisper before she asks, “Or… was it Tess?”

Anger flares up and then dies as fast as it came. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Hmm.”

She strums the guitar and the note’s almost right, but not quite.

“Here, like this. See?” He demonstrates how to press the strings down, and she chews on her lower lip while she tries to copy him.

At least it shuts her up.

He doesn’t like to talk about it, doesn’t like to consider the mistakes he’s made and the people he’s lost and the fact that somewhere out there is a woman who has _him_ for a soulmate.

She’ll be better off finding someone who can make her happy, not waiting around for him.

At this point, he’d be surprised if she even wants him.

He wouldn’t.

\---

Joel’s going through the supplies people have been dropping off at his new house when the door bursts open without a knock. He has his pistol in his hand before he realizes it’s just Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t even react like he could’ve been shot, just keeps walking until he’s in Joel’s space.

“I need you to come with me.”

“What’s wrong?” Joel’s following Tommy before he finishes asking the question, because it doesn’t really matter _what_ is wrong so much that something _is_ wrong, and if he can help… he will.

“We’re going to talk to Emma.”

Joel follows Tommy outside and down the street to the house he knows belongs to Emma even though he _doesn’t_ know what’s so important that they both have to help. If she’s sick, how can he help? If there’s physical danger, then it wouldn’t just be at her house. If it’s Ellie--

“We thought her soulmate died over the winter.”

“Ellie told me.”

Tommy glances over his shoulder at him and frowns. “We _thought_ he died. She got this crazy scar while we were out running patrol together -- she said it hurt from her back to her stomach, like he got stuck straight through with somethin’.”

“Okay, but…”

Oh.

Oh, _shit._

“Yeah, you know anybody’s been impaled a few months ago?”

Joel doesn’t have time to say anything to that, because they’re up on Emma’s porch before Tommy’s words have really, truly finished sinking in.

Tommy knocks on Emma’s door once, more courtesy than Joel got, and then he’s pushing right on through like he owns the place. Joel hovers by the door with his hands clenched by his sides so he won’t touch the scar under his ribs.

She can’t be his soulmate.

What are the _chances?_ What are the chances this is a _coincidence?_

She’s been here this whole time?

A door slams from deeper in the house, pulling Joel’s thoughts out of their spiral. Why didn’t Tommy just _tell_ him about this like a _normal fucking person_ instead of dragging him over here with his mind still spinning?

“I’m tired of your shit, Tommy!” Emma comes down the stairs at a jog, knit socks appearing before the rest of her. She’s in pajamas, or something, comfortable clothes for sitting at home, not for guests, and she hesitates once she sees both men standing there.

Joel shifts away, not sure where to look, but his eyes unconsciously focusing on her nose to see if she has the same little scar there as him.

How has he never tried to see it there?

“Everything okay?” She comes the rest of the way down the stairs and into the living room at a more reasonable pace, then stops a few feet away and wraps her arms around her stomach.

“Just fine!” Tommy sounds weird, and Emma narrows her eyes at him.

Joel can’t stop looking at her.

There’s a scar on her nose.

“Quit lookin’ at me like that. Joel’s just got some news for you!” Tommy waves at her and turns on his heel to face Joel again. He looks absolutely smug, gloating like he’s figured out the world’s toughest riddle, and then he claps Joel on the shoulder and pulls Emma’s front door closed behind him as he leaves.

“What’s up? Ellie okay?”

Joel just stares at her. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t have the words to explain to her what’s going on, who they are to each other, that he’d understand if she doesn’t care but he’s _alive._

He didn’t have time to think about this at all, and goddamn Tommy for making the introduction like this.

“Joel?”

He opens his mouth to say something, to say _anything,_ but his words escape him. He hasn’t been this tongue-tied since he was a goddamn teenager, everything jumbling up inside him before it can make its way out.

She huffs out an irritated sigh and rakes her fingers through her hair. She gathers up a handful and stands with her arm up for a second, looking past him at the door like she can glare a hole in the back of Tommy’s skull from here, but Joel can’t stop looking at her scars.

With her hair out of the way, he can see twin scars on the side of her neck, just under her jaw, right where his beard covers his.

“Where’d you get them scars?” Her eyes snap to his, widening every so slightly. When she doesn’t answer, he elaborates: “On your neck.”

She lets her hair fall, and for half a second he thinks he’s going to send him away, but then…

“Just the top one’s mine,” she says. “Some Hunters got too close to me in Virginia.” She says “hunters” like he does, the letters running together until the T disappears completely. She shrugs one shoulder like she’s embarrassed, but smiles a little all the same.

He moves closer to her, and she doesn’t move away. “And your nose?”

Her gaze lands on his nose too, and she blinks hard and fast as he keeps moving in. “Not mine either. Joel, you--”

“And this one?” He grabs her left hand with his, wrapping his fingers around hers as he pulls her arm up a little higher. He can hear her breath catching when he pushes the sleeve of her sweater up toward her elbow, exposing the long scar that travels up the inside of her wrist. “This was before Virginia.”

“Yeah. It was.”

Her fingers are shaking when she reaches up to undo the button on the cuff of his shirt, but he lets her pull it free so she can push the fabric out of the way too. She touches the mark where it disappears under his watch and licks her lips.

He’s not surprised when she pulls her hand free of his grip to press them both against his stomach, just under his ribs, exactly where the scar from Colorado sits.

She stares at her fingers against the worn flannel until he finally reaches up to put one hand on her waist. If he stretched a little closer, he’d be able to touch the scar on her back too.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

When she finally looks up at him, her eyes are full of tears. He can’t help pulling her closer by her waist so that she tucks her head against his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her, resting one hand on the back of her head to keep her close, but she holds him with her fingers tangled so tight in his shirt that he doesn’t think she’ll ever let go again.

Her shoulders are shaking. She’s trying to be quiet, he thinks, but she’s crying into his shoulder as she clings to him, but despite that…

It feels good to hold her.

It feels right.

\---

“What happened?” She should let go of him, should stop crying into his shirt and let him sit on the couch, maybe open the beers she has still in her fridge, settle down and get comfortable and talk about the forty years they’ve spent apart, but…But she can’t let go of him, can’t make herself let go in case he disappears again, in case this is all a joke and he’s not really _hers._

He’s holding her as tight as she’s holding him, at least, his hands large and soothing against her back. He moves a little before he answers, but it’s just to tangle his fingers in the end of her hair, like he’s playing with it.

“Did Tommy tell you where Ellie and I were goin’?”

“Colorado.”

“Yeah. We met some, uh, cannibals there.” She stiffens at that word, horror flooding her, but he just holds her through it and keeps talking until she relaxes again. “We fought with ‘em and one pushed me off a balcony and I landed on some construction shit they’d just left lyin’ around.”

“Jesus.” She burrows closer, and he lets her. She thinks she feels him press a kiss to the top of her head, and it brings a fresh wave of tears she tries to choke back. “You got away though.”

“We did. Ellie… she’s a real tough kid. She’s been through more’n she should, but she’s good.”

“She is good. She’s lucky she has you.”

Joel makes a weird little grumbling noise at that, like he doesn’t know how to accept the compliment, and it makes her start to laugh through her tears.

He releases her then, but when she stands upright his hands come back to cup her jaw. His thumbs trace over her still-wet cheeks, and he looks at her with such naked tenderness that she almost starts crying again. 

The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen when he smiles, and she wants to kiss him.

She looks at his lips.

When she looks back up to meet his gaze, his eyes are already boring into hers.

He leans forward with painful slowness, like he thinks she’s going to turn him away.

Tommy would have to walk back in the house to drag Joel back away as fast as he brought Joel to her to stop her now.

She nods at him, fast, and his hand slips from her jaw around to the back of her head to finally bring their lips together.

His lips pressing against hers feels like the most natural thing in the world. If she hadn’t believed in soulmates before, if she hadn’t spent her whole life waiting for this moment… the way he holds her would change her mind.

It’s everything she’s been dreaming of, warm and safe and tender, and she throws herself into it, lets herself _drown._

She wraps her arms around his shoulders and leans more of his weight against him, and he slides his hands down to wrap his arms around her waist easy as anything.

No kiss has _ever_ felt like this before.

She’s not sure how long they stand there together, tangled up in each other’s arms, but she’s breathless when he finally breaks the kiss and rests his forehead against hers. He doesn’t move otherwise, and she doesn’t try to pull away, too content together to try to break apart.

“You, uh, you eaten yet?”

She stands up straight when she hears him speak, and he relaxes his grip on her but doesn’t quite let her go yet. “No. Is it that late?” She turns to look out the window, where the sun is setting, and when she looks back at Joel he has a soft little smile on his face that makes her blush. “Huh.”

“We could go get dinner,” he says, voice low. “I hear Seth’s place is pretty good.”

She wants to spend more time with him -- she wants to spend _all_ her time with him -- but there’s no way she’s letting him out of the house right now. She has too many questions, too many things to say, and… she wants to enjoy this without all of the town watching them.

“We could make something here. I have--” she doesn’t know what she has, can’t remember a single thing in her fridge or cupboards-- “food? And beer. They make it here and it’s pretty good.”

She blinks at him but stops short at batting her eyelashes. She almost can’t control herself now that he’s in front of her. She can’t stop touching him, can’t stop looking at him, and she’s spent so long waiting for this moment… it’s like the joy is taking over her brain.

He just nods, easy as anything. “Sure. Let’s see what we can wrestle up.”

And they do.

\---

Dinner is simple, easy, they talk and work side by side, awkwardly fitting together at first but easing into it as they learn how the other moves. It feels so brand new but so comfortable at the same time, like it should’ve always been this way, and Emma feels another pang of loss that it took so long to find each other.

They exchange stories as they work, more as they eat, more as they move to the couch in her living room with their beers. She’s going to feel gross in the morning, probably most of the day, but it’s worth it to see the way it makes Joel go all loose and comfortable.

He speaks more after the beers than he did before them, becomes more willing to touch on the stories he’d skirted around at the beginning of the evening.

Some things still hurt too much, the wounds too deep. What happened the day of the outbreak, for him, other than the vague explanation of losing his daughter. What happened in West Virginia, for her, other than the vague explanation of going home to find her family.

Not everything needs to be exposed right away.

They have the rest of their lives.

When Joel drains the last of his drink and puts it on the low table, she thinks he’s about to leave, but he just leans forward and pushes her hair behind her ear. It exposes the scars on her neck, but she doesn’t care, not now, not as he presses a feather-light kiss to the dent on her nose and then to her cheek, then to the first scar he’d mentioned out loud.

His touch sears her, marking her as his just as surely as the scars that cover her body. Her breath catches in her throat and she tilts her chin up so he can kiss her again if he wants to.

He does, so gently she’d barely be able to feel him without the rasp of his beard over her skin, his hand tracing the shell of her ear and coming to rest at the back of her head, fingers tangled in her hair.

When she turns toward him, lips parted, he moves with her. He kisses one corner of her mouth, then the other, and he’s smiling when he finally gives her what she wants.

Their lips move together, gentle at first, slow, still learning each other. Emma rests her fingers on the back of his neck and rasps her fingers through the short hairs there as she slides her tongue across his lower lip. 

He leans into her with a tiny sigh, meeting her tongue with his own. It makes her shiver, sparks flying through her like the first time they touched.

She moves closer too, pushing up onto her knees and then forward as he slides his hands to her hips and pulls her into him. She breaks their kiss as she settles in his lap, resting their foreheads together as she tries to catch her breath.

He waits for her, hands rubbing soothing circles on her sides, not pushing, not speaking, just holding her. Just, she thinks, enjoying being with her as much as she’s enjoying being with him.

They have more things to talk about, more things to discuss, but right now all she can think about…

She kisses him again, deep, licking into his mouth to see if she can make him sigh again, because quiet as he usually is, she wants to see what kind of noises he’ll make alone with her.

He rewards her with a little groan, still quiet, and her fingers slide down the back of his neck and over his shoulders as his creep up under the hem of her ugly sweatshirt, just high enough to rest on the small of her back.

It’s perfect.

He’s perfect.

His skin is warm under her fingers, and it grows warmer still when his lips leave hers to leave a burning trail down her throat. He holds her tight even as she starts to squirm in his lap, overwhelmed by the way he feels, by the way he _makes_ her feel.

If only she’d met him before everything happened, when they were still in their twenties. She would have taken him home right away, thrown caution to the wind in the name of finally being with her soulmate. She could have moved to Texas, could have watched the silver grow into the dark hair she has clutched in her fist, could have spent years learning how best to make him moan.

Joel pulls the neckline of her sweatshirt down a bit, just enough to expose the dip of her collarbone and the scar she got when she was eight. He kisses it, a slow, lingering kiss that makes her shiver all over.

“A horse kicked me,” she says, voice low and catching in the middle as he kisses her again.

He makes a little humming noise of acknowledgement and kisses her one more time before sitting upright and reaching to kiss her lips again.

She leans away just enough so that he misses, then ducks her head and brushes her nose against his. He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the edges the way she already loves, and waits to see what she’ll do next.

“C’mon,” she says, lifting her chin enough to kiss the scar on his nose, the one he said he got from a pissy FEDRA officer. “Let’s go upstairs.”

He draws in a deep breath before he tilts his chin up and catches her lips with his one more time. He catches her lower lip between his teeth and tugs, gently, just enough to make her shiver again, and then he lets her go, pulling his hands out of her shirt and letting her stand.

She offers him her hand when she’s on her feet, and he takes it, twining their fingers together as she turns and pulls him through the house. She flips off the lights as she goes, leading him up the stairs and down the hall in near-darkness until she can turn on the little lamp by her bed.

He looks different up here in the dim light, tall and broad and hungry. He reaches for her and she steps into his embrace, stretching up onto her toes so she can kiss him easily. 

This kiss is headier than the ones they shared downstairs, overwhelming, and he only stops to draw in a breath when her hands start to tug his shirt free where it’s tucked into his old jeans.

“You sure you want this?” His voice is barely a whisper, but it seems loud in the quiet house. She stops untucking his shirt and he adds, “I wasn’t expectin’--” He trails off.

She doesn’t really mean to laugh, but a light giggle escapes her anyway. “I’m sure,” She goes back to untucking his shirt, and he lets her this time. “ ‘Course, all the condoms expired fifteen years ago, so… I’m sure you know what to do.”

His chuckle is deep, his fingers tightening on her hips. “Yes, ma’am.”

She’s laughing as he kisses her again and starts pushing her back toward the bed, but the noise dissolves into a little moan as he slips her sweatshirt off and lets it drop to the floor. She still has a tank on, but this exposes so many more scars than before. 

He runs his hands from her shoulders to her wrists, calluses catching on the rough ridges of skin, ending with his thumb on the pulse in her wrists. His right thumb presses into the beginning of the scar on her arm, and then he pulls her hand up so he can kiss it.

She watches his lips trace up the scar, trying to control her breathing. When he reaches the other end, near the crook of her elbow, he surges back up to capture her lips. It’s hungrier now, insistent, a promise in each practiced swipe of his tongue.

She tugs at his shirt buttons without opening her eyes to look, even with her fingers shaking, and manages to open enough that he just reaches between them to finish the job.

He drops his shirt to the floor next to hers and reaches for her again, but this time it’s her turn to stop and touch. His scar from Colorado is jarring against the smooth skin around it, exactly where hers is but so much more painful to see. She traces the outline of it as he takes slow, deep breaths.

“I can’t believe you survived.”

He puts his hand over hers again. “Didn’t think I would.”

His other hand finds its way back into her hair, guiding her forward. She lets him pull her in for a kiss that blends right away into the next one and then the next. It’s impossible to resist him, and she drowns in it, throws herself into it, pulls and pushes at his clothes until he starts to laugh at her eagerness, a low rolling chuckle that might have upset her if his hands weren’t just as desperate.

She kisses the scars under his jaw, then the one on his collarbone, fingers plucking at his belt and then the fly of his jeans before his hands catch hers and pull them away. She meets his gaze, eyebrows drawing together, but he releases her and grabs the hem of her tank instead.

He lifts it, and she raises her arms so he can pull it off with ease. He licks his lips and traces his fingers up her sides, over her ribs, up to her breasts. She arches into his touch, a moan catching in the back of her throat.

Their gazes meet again as his fingers still. She sucks in a deep breath and then he’s moving forward, into her space, lifting her as he goes so that he can lay her on her bed, right on top of the messy blankets she never bothers to make.

He crawls over her, chasing her lips as she moves up toward her pillows, smiling as he struggles to keep his eyes on her face. When she settles, legs bent on either side of his hips, he brushes his lips across hers in the lightest of kisses before moving down her throat.

His beard rasps across her skin as he kisses down the center of her chest, and she arches up toward his mouth as he moves. She thinks she knows where he’s going, is ready to thread her fingers into his hair and let him do what he wants, but… 

He surprises her, moving down to kiss the scar on her stomach, _the_ scar, the one she thought would be the last one she ever got.

She threads her fingers into his hair anyway and shivers, goosebumps racing over her as his tongue tastes her skin.

It’s a heady feeling, this strong man over her, his arms bracketing her body while her hips bracket his thighs. When she looks down the line of her body, she can see his face furrowed in concentration, eyes squeezed closed as he presses a kiss below her navel, then another to the jut of her hipbone.

He pushes up onto his knees, bringing his face and torso fully into the light of her lamp. He smiles at her, teeth glinting, and hooks his fingers into the waistband of her sweats.

She barely has time to wish, again, that she was wearing proper clothes before it doesn't matter anymore. She arches her hips up and he pulls, discarding the comfortable pants on the floor, and then he’s back on top of her to press his lips to hers before she has time to get self conscious.

If they’d met twenty years ago… 

It doesn’t seem to matter. He kisses her like he’s starving for it, and she basks in his touch. 

She wraps her arms around his neck and holds him tight, pressing their bodies together until there’s no space between them, the only thing stopping her from feeling all of him the jeans he still wears and the open belt buckle pressing into her belly.

His weight on top of her is a comfortable one, the bare skin of their chests and stomach pressing together even as the material of his jeans scratches against her legs. She arches her hips up toward his, and his press right back down, a slow rhythm building in the push and pull of it until she can’t handle it any more.

She pushes at his shoulder, and when he breaks their kiss to give her space, she keeps pushing until he rolls onto his back and she can sit upright over his hips. She can grind against him better in this position, so she does, a little rocking motion that makes him clench his jaw and grab for her hips.

She thinks he’s going to stop her, to halt her movements so she’ll be still on top of him, but he doesn’t. He just surges up until he can kiss her again, shifting them around until she’s sitting on the mattress with her thighs draped over his. 

They’re sitting eye-to-eye now, the energy shifting again as he runs his hands from her hips down to her knees, then back up, a soothing motion that has her catching her lower lip between her teeth and leaning back to rest her weight on her arms.

“How long’s it been?” His voice is low as he slides his right hand around to the inside of her thigh, and her muscles jump under the rasp of his calloused fingers. 

She has to swallow before she answers with a question. “Since I was with a man?” He nods, fingers inching higher. “Jesus. Since before I left Nashville.” She spreads her legs a little wider, ignoring the twinge of embarrassment she feels at being so fully on display. “You gonna change that?”

His grin is a little feral, lopsided and toothy at her words. “Yes, ma’am.” His hand finally reaches her center and his fingers brush through her curls. “How d’you like it?”

He slides his middle finger into her before she can answer, and she moans aloud instead. He grins at her again, or maybe still, leaning in a little closer as he begins to move slow and rhythmic inside her.

“That’s good,” she says, voice little more than a whisper. She tries to press her hips up against his hand but it’s hard with the way they’re sitting. It’s worth the small amount of frustration to see the way his eyes roam over her body like he can’t get enough. She adds, “You don’t have to be so gentle. You won’t break me.”

He meets her gaze steady as he slips another finger in beside the first, the stretch just enough now for her to feel it. She matches his grin back at him and nods, her moans catching with her breath in her throat.

“How do, ah, how do _you_ like it?” It’s hard to keep her voice steady, but Joel doesn’t even answer her. His eyes have dropped from her face to his fingers inside her, their motion picking up speed as he finds the rhythm she likes. Her toes curl and she arches into his touch as his free hand slides up her side to cup her breast. “Oh, you like to watch? Is that it?”

His eyes flash up to hers, briefly, and she wonders if she’s stumbled onto the truth before his hand finishes moving up until it’s tangled in her hair and he’s pulled her in for a kiss.

It’s messy and artless, tongues meeting without hesitation. She moans into his mouth and he swallows the sound, sighing back at her like it’s the loudest noise he knows how to make. She grabs for anything she can reach, tangling one hand in his short hair while her other hand scratches at his shoulders, holding on as tight as she can as his thumb finds her clit.

He’s not teasing anymore.

It’s like he already knows how to touch her, like them being soulmates has made sure he’s perfect for her in every way, including in this. His rhythm doesn’t falter even as she grows louder, even as she begins to tremble, even as she digs her nails into the meat of his shoulder as he pushes her closer and closer to her peak.

She’s not even really kissing him back now, just moaning against his lips. He rests his forehead against hers instead and keeps his free hand holding her steady on her hip.

It’s too much too fast, and she doesn’t want to slow down but she doesn’t want to finish just yet either.

She wants to feel him inside her before she comes.

“Wait,” she says, voice hoarse and raw, and she starts to grab for his wrist but she doesn’t have to. He stills as soon as he tells her to, starts to pull away and sit up to check on her, his question evident in the way his eyebrows start to draw together. “Let me -- just -- why are you still wearing your jeans?”

He blinks at the abrupt shift in topic before actually glancing down like he has to confirm what he’s got on. He looks back up at her with a smile that looks a bit sheepish. “I had more important things to think about. You alright?”

She nods. “I just want you inside me, is all. That okay?”

His smile grows. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay.”

He pulls away from her and they disentangle from each other, moving just enough so he can slide to the edge of the bed and push his jeans down until they’re on the floor. The second he turns back to her, Emma pushes him until he’s laying on her pillows and she can hover over him.

He’d look relaxed there if it wasn’t for the tense muscles of his stomach, the way they jump under her touch as she drags her fingers through the dark hair she finds there on her way down. She wraps her fingers around his cock like she’s testing it, strokes just enough to let him know she means business before she pushes up onto her knees and sinks down onto him.

He fills her perfectly, each inch exquisite, and she forgets to watch him as she settles in his lap. She just closes her eyes and tilts her head back with a little smile, her hands resting flat on his chest. She made such a big deal about wanting him inside of her, and now all she wants to do is savor the feeling.

He waits without speaking, hips still, though his hands wander almost immediately, up over her ribs, down over her scar, then even farther down towards her curls. His nails scratch, just a bit, catching over her hipbone, and that’s what finally makes her open her eyes and look back down at him.

His lips are parted when their gazes meet again, his eyes dark. “You okay, sweetheart?”

The pet name warms her from the inside out, and she shifts her weight forward as she slides her hands up to rest on the pillow by his head. Joel inhales sharply, shifting under her, pulling her closer to him ever so slightly so he sinks just that much deeper into her.

“I’ve never been better.”

She kisses him, and it’s soft once more. It lingers as long as she can stand it, then she pushes herself upright and begins to move.

Right away it’s almost too much. Joel exhales sharply again, then grunts as she rocks in his lap. She shivers and moves faster, pushing muscles she hasn’t used like this in years, searching for exactly the right rhythm to pull more noises out of him while still pushing her higher.

Her body remembers this, remembers how to bend and flex, but having her soulmate under her is so much better than she could ever imagine. Just having Joel’s skin against hers makes sparks dance up and down her spine, and when his big hands roam over her skin, tucking her hair behind her ear and cupping her breast… it’s too much.

It’s too much.

She moves faster on top of him, thrusts a little harder, tries to listen for him over her own muffled cries.

 _“Fuck,_ Joel…”

She squeals when he moves under her, pushing her up and over so that she’s on her back and he’s hovering over her again. He presses his face against her neck as he pushes back inside her, then he groans by ear as he begins to fuck her in earnest.

He’s still quiet, but she can hear every word.

“Didn’t think I’d ever have this.” His words come out as harsh pants, and he grabs for one of her hands so he can twine their fingers together. “Never.”

It’s enough to bring tears to her eyes, despite the pleasure coursing through her. She squeezes his fingers and wraps her legs around his waist, holding him as tight as she can with her free hand tangled in his hair.

“Yeah,” she says, gasping as he hits her just right. It derails her train of thought completely, makes her forget she was agreeing, that she feels the same way. She forgets everything except how this feels, how her body responds when Joel presses an open-mouthed kiss against her throat. _“Yes.”_

She interrupted him earlier, made him stop so she could feel him inside of her, under her or on top of her, and now she’s completely surrounded by him. It’s exactly what she wanted, exactly what she’s been waiting for, and the only thing that would make it more perfect is…

“Kiss me.” She tugs at his hair, trying to pull his face back up to hers. “Joel, kiss me, please.”

He releases her hand and pushes himself up onto his elbows so he can kiss her properly. He groans when she accidentally tugs at his hair again as the angle of his thrusts changes too, pressing the noise into the kiss like it’s a secret to share between them, and it’s all too much for her.

She comes just like that, too fast to warn him, and cries out as he breaks their kiss. The pleasure rolls over her, spiking high before leaving her breathless and trembling.

“Beautiful.”

When she opens her eyes, she finds him already looking down at her, propped up over her so he can see her properly. His eyes are dark and his lips are parted as he draws in sharp breaths, and she smiles up at him just before she pulls her legs up higher so he slips deeper into her.

He collapses back against her chest, but he doesn’t slow the deep thrusts of his hips as he tucks his face against her throat. His beard scratches at her skin and she scratches at his back in retaliation, unable to stop smiling at the way he groans a little louder like he just can’t help it anymore.

He brushes his lips against her skin like he wants to kiss her but can’t quite make his body cooperate with him, and she almost doesn’t hear him over their breathing and the wet sounds of him still moving inside of her.

“Almost,” he says, voice rough and low. “Goddamn. I gotta…”

She knows, she knows what she told him before, but now that he’s pressed so tight against her, so deep inside of her… she doesn’t want him to pull away, not even for a second. He’s her soulmate, and she wants all of him.

“Joel?” She doesn’t mean to cling to him tighter, but she does, feet on the small of his back and her fingers digging into his shoulder and the back of his neck. “Come inside me?”

His answering groan is deep and guttural, sending another spike of pleasure through her. He nods against her, fast, and shakes as he begins to come, deep inside her, just like she asked.

She holds him tight as he shudders through it, running her fingers through his hair as he begins to calm down, and then she begins to laugh.

He pulls out of her and rolls onto his side, pulling her with him so they’re laying face to face. She’s still grinning, little giggles escaping her, and he smiles back at her as he tucks her hair back behind her ear.

“That okay?” His hand keeps traveling down her body, sweeping over her curves before finally coming to rest on the curve of her hip.

“Perfect,” she says, and she really, really means it. She can’t stop smiling, even when she leans forward and presses another kiss to his lips. “You gonna stay?”

She doesn’t know if she means for the night or in Jackson or with her, but when he kisses her again before he answers, she thinks he means all three.

“Yeah. Long as you’ll have me.”

She laughs again. “Might be a long time.”

He reaches up for her chin, holding it gently with his thumb just under her lip. He’s grinning back at her, his face relaxed, the lines around his eyes deep. “Good.”


End file.
